


Yuri!!! On Vice

by ThreeHats



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Police, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 22:08:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10840437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreeHats/pseuds/ThreeHats
Summary: "Georgi Popovich!" Victor winced at the feedback from the instrument, taking a moment to cradle his coffee and pout as though that noise had been more affecting than the sporadic streams of dim gunfire. "We know you're in there. If I were you, I'd start making things easy on yourself and come out with your hands behind your head and your weapons on the floor. Otherwise I'm afraid I'm going to have Chicago's finest deliver you to me so I can personally remind you that I offered to play nice. And I don't make that offer to just anyone."Victor turned, unable to hide the smirk that now played across his gorgeous young features. He aimed it square at the two surbordinates flanking the rear of his cruiser, one a glowering blond fresh out of the academy and the other a promising upstart whose potential and skill were only outweighed by his self-doubt. The two Yuris gave him contrasting reactions - Plisetsky's jaw loosened as his chin seemed to shrink back into his collar in a cringe-like gesture, while the corners of Katsuki's mouth seemed to match Victor's expression with an impish smile. He knew Victor always offered to play nice.





	Yuri!!! On Vice

**Author's Note:**

> This was written by LittleKuriboh for his and Marianne's 7th wedding anniversary. Leave lots of comments to convince him to continue it (because I want more). Enjoy!

A smattering of gunfire rang out through the Chicago streets, causing Detective Sergeant Victor Nikiforov to curse softly in Russian as he almost spilled his coffee onto his immaculately preserved uniform. He leaned butt-first against the open door of his police vehicle and contemplated the hot dirt water within its protective flask, a bright blue plastic thing with light brown cartoon poodles hopping across it in a fetching pattern.  
  
He didn't even like coffee all that much. He had realized that very early on, even prior to the start of his career when training to become a member of the force. All the other cadets had sworn by the stuff, yet he had only been given cause to swear at it. However it did the job and got him through the rigorous challenges and late night/early morning stakeouts that had led him to his position as a superior officer on one of the busiest beats in the windy city. And he was damn good at the job, he considered. He just had serious reservations about attributing any of that to the putrid caffeinated beverage that peered back at him over the metal lip of his canteen.  
  
A few more bursts of bullets careened somewhere indistinctly from within the apartment building, and Victor took a moment to lower his fashionable sunglasses and shoot a pointed eyeroll at the large group of armed officers whose own eyes were too busy being trained on the suspect's location to notice his sass. He brought the megaphone to his lips and spoke calmly and clearly.  
  
"Georgi Popovich!" Victor winced at the feedback from the instrument, taking a moment to cradle his coffee and pout as though that noise had been more affecting than the sporadic streams of dim gunfire. "We know you're in there. If I were you, I'd start making things easy on yourself and come out with your hands behind your head and your weapons on the floor. Otherwise I'm afraid I'm going to have Chicago's finest deliver you to me so I can personally remind you that I offered to play nice. And I don't make that offer to just anyone."  
  
Victor turned, unable to hide the smirk that now played across his gorgeous young features. He aimed it square at the two surbordinates flanking the rear of his cruiser, one a glowering blond fresh out of the academy and the other a promising upstart whose potential and skill were only outweighed by his self-doubt. The two Yuris gave him contrasting reactions - Plisetsky's jaw loosened as his chin seemed to shrink back into his collar in a cringe-like gesture, while the corners of Katsuki's mouth seemed to match Victor's expression with an impish smile. He knew Victor always offered to play nice.  
  
A window exploded somewhere on the fourth floor of the building, and a faux hawked man with bizarre makeup coloring his face kicked the remaining glass out from the frame as he dared to venture stabbing his head out into the gusty alley.  
  
"If I can't have her, nobody can!" The suspect cried mournfully, his dark makeup marred by imperfections as his tears streaked the lines and made his a mask of spiteful regret. From this distance, Victor could identify the automatic rifle he was holding. Judging by the amount of commotion and gunfire, Victor couldn't imagine he had many more rounds left - assuming he didn't have more ammo stashed in there with him. No evidence of any further gunmen - and judging by Georgi's former reputation as a petty criminal working under other much more ambitious scum, nobody was about to come bail him out of this mess he'd made. "She's mine! I'll die before I give her to you! You hear me? You can't separate us! We're meant to be together!"  
  
"He should be arrested for that makeup job alone," Victor muttered as he lowered the speaker after issuing a final warning. "I know they call him the Witch, but I imagine even the girls in Salem knew their way around eyeliner."  
  
"Why don't we just send everyone in at once? Go all out on him, take him down, righteous force and all that," asked Yuri Plisetsky, the one affectionately - though don't tell Plisetsky about that quantifier - known as Yurio. He was notable for many reasons, not least of which his prodigious rise through the ranks of the force, but also not to scoff at was his exceptionally high follower count on Instagram. His livestreams of crime scene investigations had frequently gathered upwards of 10,000 simultaneous viewers - though this was certainly not something their chief thought of as a plus. "We must have at least 30 men here. We bumrush the guy and he's ours."  
  
"An exciting suggestion!" Victor's eyes lit up and he wagged his coffee flask like a baton at him. "I'm sure that would be the first thing that would happen if this were a 1970s action flick. But sadly this is a real situation and it calls for realistic answers."  
  
Victor's eyes fell on Yuri Katskui, the hard working boy from Japan who had the precinct record of well over 600 arrests in a year, only just beating out Victor's own longstanding achievement. Yuri was always much quieter than his younger, more hotheaded associate - though Victor knew full well it wasn't because he had nothing to say. It was his ability to contemplate a situation and narrow the job down to what needs to be done that had earned him his reputation as MVP of the CPD. And he looked especially good in that uniform, Victor noted. Almost as good as he did.  
  
Yuri nodded to Victor, who was pleasantly taken aback. He hadn't even given the order yet and Yuri was prepared to follow it. Hell, from the determined look in his eyes, he may as well have given it himself.  
  
"All right," Victor began, screwing the lid back onto his canteen as he tightened his face into as serious an expression as he could muster. Catching his reflection briefly in the window of his vehicle, he noted that he still looked cute even when pensive. "We're not going to turn this into a spectacle. This is going to be like surgery. Get in there and get out with minimal action taken, quick and precise. As such I need my best surgical equipment, and that's you two."  
  
"I don't appreciate being compared to a stethoscope," Yurio grumbled, his eagerness to get to work evident.  
  
"Not used in surgery," Yuri interjected. "Maybe think of yourself as a needle."  
  
"I am not going to be any pussy needle! I am a hacksaw! Or something with blades, what do they use that has blades?"  
  
"You can be anything you want to be," Victor encouraged as the two Yuris bristled at each other's company. "But right now I need you to be focused. We know most of the building's residents are accounted for, but from the sounds of things Georgi has at least one hostage. We mustn't let anything happen to them. Is that understood?"  
  
"Understood, sir!"  
  
Victor removed his shades with his free hand and gave them both a steely gaze of approval as they replied in unison. He enjoyed their synchronicity. Even when they were at odds, they did it perfectly in tandem.  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
  
"Why do they call him the Witch, anyway?" Yurio asked in a hushed voice as they made their way up the flights of stairs to the fourth floor.  
  
Yuri's weapon was at the ready, his finger placed firmly above the trigger guard as he kept his eyes forward and upward, surveying the scene. It was darker inside. Seemed as though Popovich had taken out the lights, judging by the bulletholes in the walls and ceilings surrounding them. Maybe he'd done it to give himself more cover, or maybe he'd done it out of sheer irrational anger. Yuri had seen his file, or at least enough of it to get a good idea of how he'd be likely to behave. He was known to have emotional breakdowns that resulted in property damage. Never killed anyone before. But judging by their current situation, his consistency wasn't a gamble Yuri was ready to risk.  
  
"Aren't witches usually girls?" Yurio kept asking the real questions as they ascended. "What, there isn't a word for the boy version of that here in America? Shouldn't we be calling him, I don't know, Georgi 'The Wizard' Popovich?"  
  
Yuri's voice and demeanor remained calm, though he was doing his best to hold back a chuckle as he responded: "How about 'The Wiz'? We could tell him to ease on down his weapons."  
  
"Must be a Japanese joke because I don't get it," Yurio chided.  
  
Young and somewhat naive as he was, having emigrated from Russia Yurio struggled to acclimate to American society. He found the people a little too trusting and the weather a little too warm anywhere but here in Chicago. The only heat he acclimated to was the heat wave of criminal activity that had taken root in this fair city. He hated crime - no, more specifically, he hated criminals. His family had supported his move to America based solely on the fact that it was a land of opportunity, a land for free people. The idea that there were those who would choose to exploit these freedoms for personal gain, at the expense of the law and those who would follow it, clearly offended him deeply.  
  
Yuri and Yurio positioned themselves on either side of a door leading into the hallway of the fourth floor. It was wide open, but that alone seemed suspect - like an invitation by the Witch to climb voluntarily into the hot embrace of their oven. Yuri grunted and set about motioning with hand signals as to how they should proceed. He indicated Yurio follow his lead and cover the rear while he took point and searched the area. Yurio looked initially affronted by the suggestion he should follow anyone, but as bright as the stress vein in his brow was, his badge shone even brighter.  
  
Kipping off from the wall, Yuri spun nimbly through the entrance and aimed his pistol down the corridor leading to where Georgi had last been spotted. The door to apartment 424 opposed them ominously at the far end of the walkway, while a dozen other such apertures flanked him on either side. According to the blueprints Yuri had scanned, Georgi had been screaming at them from the now slightly ajar Apartment 410. It was far enough into the corridor to feel like it might as well have been ten miles.  
  
Without missing a beat, Yuri made a beeline for 410, braced by caution as he kept his firearm at the ready. He remembered when he'd struggled with even so much as carrying a loaded weapon barely a few years back. Earlier in his career it hadn't seemed like all that big of a deal, but when apprehending a wanted assassin and known affiliate of the Chinese mafia, he had been forced to fire upon his target multiple times. Two rounds had found his target and neutralized him so that he could be taken into custody. The third round had missed. No, not missed. It had landed on an innocent bystander - a stray dog that just happened to be in the alley. Yuri had owned dogs since he was a child. Knowing that he had caused one to lose its life, even accidentally, had been enough to make him want to swear off ever even holding a gun for the rest of his.  
  
It hadn't been until a month later when Yuri was testing the waters in the shooting range, ugly giant headgear pinching at either side of his head and his grip loose with sweat, when he had found his resolve again. To his side, Victor had been firing at his own target. Yuri had known it was him before he'd even turned to glance at him due to the tiny oval of bullet holes patterned into the chest of the paper target, bearing evidence of his near perfect aim.  
  
Victor had noticed Yuri standing there for some time, unable to muster the fortitude to fire once. He took him aside, outside of the shooting range altogether so that they could speak confidentially. Yuri had been so flustered by Victor's interest that he had forgotten to return the protective headset, still sporting it around his neck where it hung uselessly against his shoulderblades.  
  
"What is it that keeps you from firing your weapon, Yuri?" Victor had asked. He had always been so personable. It was sometimes hard to trust that his concern was genuine as he never seemed to deviate from the same performance, but it had become quickly apparent that there was no act involved. Victor simply found it easier to relate to and sympathize with those around him. Sometimes when he saw something in someone that he didn't understand, he had to explore it with them so that he could do so better. "Is it that you're nervous you'll miss?"  
  
"No. I'm nervous I'll hit."  
  
Victor had understood very quickly, and almost impulsively reached for Yuri's right hand and placed it against his own chest. "Do you feel my heart beating, Yuri? Don't worry, I'm not trying to lead you in a verse of Eternal Flame. I wouldn't do that to you."  
  
Yuri's face turned hot, which was a welcome change from the numb, pointless feeling that had filled him up the rest of his waking hours. "I feel it, sir."  
  
"The heart is very much like a gun. It's small, and it can be easy to hold onto. But when used, it can cause serious damage to another person if not handled correctly." Yuri felt Victor's fingers squeezing softly into the back of his hand as he spoke. Gentle and reassuring. "But it would be a crime to find the right time and the right person to use it on, and choose not to. Wouldn't it?"  
  
Yuri had held his breath before nodding. Victor's words seemed as honest and true as his aim.  
  
They stayed with Yuri even in moments like this where he was certain that he should be clearing his mind of all other thoughts. Victor was with Yuri in nearly all of his police work, even the times when he wasn't at the scene with him. His presence was calming and warm, in a line of work where things tended to be anything but.  
  
"Ten o'clock!"  
  
Yurio's snarl of a warning cut through Yuri's reflection like a hot knife with a thick Russian accent, alerting him to the sudden movement from room 408. To the surprise of both of them, Georgi had been waiting one room down from where he had been shooting - but it wasn't enough of a shock to upend years of hard work and training for moments just like this one.  
  
"YOU CAN'T HAVE HER!" Georgi roared, flying out of the apartment with his gun clasped between both hands, holding it out in a clumsy manner almost as though he was struggling to ride a broomstick. The mask of paint smeared about his face made his expression tangled and monstrous, and his faux hawk sprouted uselessly into the air as he fired off a couple of equallly uselessrounds. "I WON'T LET YOU!"  
  
The two Yuris reacted with the speed of justice. Yuri dodged left, feinting that he might swing himself to the right to take aim and compensate for Georgi's flight path. Meanwhile, Yurio span effortlessly about Yuri's body - one false motion or moment of hesitation and they would have tripped upon each other and landed in an attractive young heap - and came to a stop on his knee, the back of his head just beneath Yuri's firearm as he too brought the barrel of his weapon to the ready. Their dance concluded, the shots from Georgi's weapon impacted impotently on the wall behind them.  
  
"Freeze, Popovich!" commanded Yurio, poised directly in front of Yuri. While Georgi's face was sufficiently hidden behind his bizarrely fashioned mask of makeup, it was clear he was panicked upon seeing twin pistols pointed his way. Yuri wondered if he'd even warranted such a response. Had this been his first time seeing a police officer with a weapon up close to him, that alone might have been enough to cause him to surrender. "You're under arrest for the trafficking of illegal substances and the suspected kidnapping of twenty seven year old Anya-"  
  
"NOOOOOO!"  
  
Georgi's face splintered into a series of colorful, terrified smudges as the hysterical shriek emitted from his throat. Whether it had been Yurio's aggressive tone or the sight of their weapons trained directly upon him, Yuri wasn't sure, but something caused Georgi to throw his automatic careening in their direction. They both dodged, Yuri to the left and Yurio to the right, as the rifle circled sadly through the air between them and landed just as harmlessly as his bullets.  
  
Before their suspect could bolt for the opposite end of the corridor, Yurio exploded from his position, his lithe young body springing into the air with all the grace and danger of a videogame beat-em-up character. He extended his right leg out and locked his body into a flying kick, the heel of his boot connecting into the small of Georgi's back with a sickening - and satisfying - crack. All Georgi could manage in response was a guttural sigh of surrender before he slumped forward and threw his hands beneath himself to prevent hitting the ground face-first.  
  
"You have the right to remain silent, IDIOT!" Yurio barked, snapping the handcuffs from his side and brandishing them eagerly before him. He began to wrestle Georgi's arms into a compromised position as he skirted the line between due diligence and police brutality, the heel of his boot now resting firmly on the back of Georgi's skull. He finished reading his suspect his rights before turning and flashing a proud grin at his partner. "Looks like I'm one perp closer to beating your record, pork cutlet!"  
  
Yuri barely even responded to his nickname anymore. The entire force was in on it. The callback wasn't anything too humiliating - only that Yuri had once eaten nothing but pork cutlet bowls on a particularly lengthy stakeout. It had kept his wits focused and his belly warm, but it had also allowed everyone to know he had a rather singular taste for the stuff.  
  
"Please..." Georgi whined between sobs. Yuri reached down and assisted Yurio as they both lifted the suspect to his feet. His faux hawk seemed to hang slightly lower than usual, almost as though in a forlorn state. Probably just a result of being tackled by one of Yurio's trademark fighting moves. "You must let me go to her... She needs me... I'm the only one who can wake her..."  
  
"Firing on police officers, that's not gonna go down well back at the station," Yurio's smarm coated his face in a manner not dissimilar to Georgi's own abundantly applied makeup job. He ignored Georgi's pleas and began patting him down for any hidden items, illicit or otherwise. "I mean, don't get me wrong. Kidnapping's pretty ambitious for a guy of your status in the criminal underworld. But shit, if that doesn't just put the icing on the cake."  
  
"Is she in there?" Yuri asked, placing one hand on Georgi's shoulder. It was a firm hold, intended to draw his attention from both Yurio's investigation of his person and Georgi's own demonstration of self-pity. He indicated apartment 410 with his free hand. Georgi didn't respond. At least, not verbally. He closed his eyes in a sign of resignation. It was all the answer Yuri needed. "I'm going in. Keep an eye on him for a moment."  
  
"Hold on, pork cutlet!" yipped Yurio, propping Georgi unceremoniously against the wall. "You don't know if there's anyone waiting for us in there."  
  
"I read his profile," Yuri replied, reaching confidently for the door handle. He noted that the door had been left slightly ajar, presumably in Popovich's rush to find a new hiding spot. He placed his hand upon it and began to pull back as he continued: "I know what to expect."  
  
Yuri's heart sank as he stepped in to apartment 410, and realized that he hadn't known what to expect at all.  
  
The living area was a shambles. The couch had been upturned and the television set was on but displaying a blank image with the letters AV blinking into the darkness repeatedly as though the device were transmitting SOS to the rest of the apartment, just in case the toaster wanted to risk a daring rescue. An open door leading to the bedroom was highlighted by some sort of strange ominous glow, almost fairy tale like - until Yuri realized that the obtuse incadescence of the surfaces of the room bore the telltale signs of a blacklight.  
  
Yuri strode across the living quarters, making note of the toys and action figures littering the ground - each of them some form of fantasy being, mostly soldiers or knights and the occasional princess. He reached out and gave the bedroom door a soft push, bringing his weapon up instinctively and announcing his arrival after clearing his throat meekly.  
  
"This is the Chicago Police Department," he warned, his pupils spreading eagerly as he entered to receive even the faintest of light from the oddly lit bedroom. He could make out the shape of the bed, and judging by the way the covers seemed to gather in the middle and furl outwards, he was certain someone was resting upon it. "Please remain calm. If you're a hostage, we're here to rescue you."  
  
The further into the room he stepped, the more nightmarish and unreal things seemed to become. The black light cast itself upon his uniform and brought out its bold blue colors, his badge seeming to glow with an unnatural quality. Moments after he had made his formal introduction to the room's sole resting occupant, he noticed the photos. They were everywhere, all over the walls, the floors, the ceiling. Pinned about him as though he was trapped inside a mobius strip fasioned from someone's photo album. He hadn't seen this many photos in one place since he'd browsed Phichit's social media over a single 24 hour period.  
  
They were all photographs of the same thing. Two people, in various scenarios. One of them was clearly Georgi - though it was hard to tell at first as his face wasn't covered in unsightly, garish colors. Yuri noted that even captured in this surreal lighting, Georgi had obviously been a perfectly handsome fellow. Why he chose to paint himself as some kind of supernatural fairy tale creature was beyond his understanding. The person next to him was equally attractive, a young girl in her mid to late twenties with dark auburn locks and a modest collection of freckles. Yuri wondered where he'd seen her before.  
  
And then he realized, he hadn't seen her before. He was looking at her right at this very moment.  
  
His eyesight acclimating to the black light, the dimensions of the room finally came into focus and he could make out the figure lying upon the bed before him. It was a young shapely girl clothed in an unnecessarily frilly costume - Yuri was hesitant to call it a dress as it didn't look like any real gown or garment that he had seen before - that looked for all the world like one of those cheap knockoff Disney princess outfits you could buy in a Halloween store with innocuous names like 'resting beauty' or 'toad royalty.' Upon her head, a plastic crown positively glimmered in the artificial lighting, a red glow the likes of which you'd expect to see in a budget haunted house emanating from the fake gem in the front of the ornament. And watching over her from the bedside table, a large model of a witch basking in the dark presence of her cauldron, her gleeful eyes at crazed, cruel angles as she cackled silently.  
  
Anya lay on the bed, completely unrestrained. At first Yuri thought her eyes fastened shut in a restful slumber, however upon closer inspection he saw they were quite open. In them were captured the harrowing images that dotted the interior of the room in a malefic montage of her former relationship with Georgi, the common criminal turned kidnapper. Her once beautiful browns were now glazed over and still, and for a moment he convinced himself she was dead. Then he saw her chest rise and fall ever so subtley, and he rushed to her side.  
  
"Anya?" He called out, replacing his firearm and taking her hand in his. She made no attempt to respond, nor did she show any signs of recognizing her own name. "Anya, wake up. I'm with the police force. My name is Yuri Katsuki, I'm here to help. If you-"  
  
"It's no use, pork cutlet," Yurio's passive aggressive intonations derailed Yuri's train of thought and caused him to turn slackjawed to his partner, who stood there in the electric light of the defunct television set - an ethereal green  framing him every two and a half seconds - with Georgi reluctantly in tow. "He says she's asleep."  
  
"Her eyes are open." Yuri insisted defiantly, squeezing Anya's upper arm and whispering to her. "Anya... We're here to protect you. If you could just-"  
  
"She's sleeping," Yurio continued, "regardless of how she looks, I can assure you. This shit head had her pumped full of so many illegal substances that she's lucky if she'll wake up in the next century, let alone right now. For all intents and purposes, she's his sleeping beauty. Fucking sicko."  
  
Yuri stared aghast at Yurio, then in turn at Georgi. The guilt had drained even most of the artificial color from his complexion. His head was slumped forward, his neck retracting into several dozen wrinkled folds like a fleshy concertina. Yuri couldn't even bring himself to pity him. All he felt was disdain and disgust.  
  
"It was the only way..." Georgi bleated in confession, his tears long since spent. "The only way she could stay... The only way she would be mine... I tried kissing her. She wouldn't wake up."  
  
"Of course she wouldn't, idiot!" Yurio scolded, reaching his hand back and aiming to strike him across the head. Georgi flinched pathetically, leading Yurio to hold his hand in mid-air with no intention of actually connecting with his face. "Scum like you don't understand how a person's heart works."  
  
Yuri stared at the two of them for a moment. Apprehending a suspect was typically a positive feeling. But this? This felt meaningless and empty. As empty as Anya's eyes now seemed.  
  
He gazed at her, looking for all the world like the penultimate image in a children's story book, where the prince must place his lips upon the maiden's in order to release her from the curse set upon her. But there was no final page to turn to, no happy ending waiting around the corner. The book just moved on without concern, the words jumbled and the emotions mixed into an ugly monochromatic mask that hid the truth.  
  
"It was the only way to know she would never leave me!"  
  
"Yeah yeah, tell it to the boys back at the office, we're always willing to let a monster talk our ears off."  
  
Yuri couldn't pull his mind from the sight of Anya's blank expression, even long after they left. Victor had been right. The damage left by a person's heart could be as grisly as any firearm.  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
  
"Now smile!"  
  
Officer Phichit snapped the culprit's mugshot with a cheer, Georgi now washed quite thoroughly of any last remnants of make-up with only a pallidness to his complexion left in its place. Now his face appeared sad and ordinary, the Witch persona having vacated the premises. Yuri had watched silently from the sidelines, wondering if there really was any humanity left in the man after all he had done to possess that innocent young woman's heart.  
  
It had been like something out of a twisted fairy tale, except rather than pricking herself on a spindle, Anya had been pricked by something else altogether. She was now resting in the hospital, the doctors having assured her family - who had given Victor an earful for allowing someone as awful as Georgi to roam the streets in the first place - that the drugs would pass through her system in time and a full recovery was not only possible but quite likely.  
  
Looking at Georgi as he turned to the side for his second picture while Officer Phichit's enthusiasm for taking mugshots went completely ignored, Yuri wondered whether a full recovery was an option for the villain of the story. Whether the Witch had a happy ending waiting, or if they just closed the book on him and hoped he figured out where everything went wrong.  
  
"You look fantastic! Love it!" Phichit's enthusiasm was wholly misplaced as he gestured to the images of Georgi's sullen profile that now appeared on his screen. As he examined Georgi's eyes and saw only dim recognition in them, he wondered to himself how badly Yurio was being chewed out for Periscoping his reading of the suspect's Miranda Rights to his legions of social media followers. "If you could use Facebook in prison, I'd recommend this one for your profile pic."  
  
Georgi had no response. He'd been no more than monosyllabic since he'd been introduced to the backseat of the police vehicle that took him to the station. Since then they'd taken his fingerprints, his picture, and his freedom.  
  
Yuri wondered if that was the end of the story. He wondered how a story like that even began. Was Georgi just a lost cause from the beginning, or was he just like anyone else? Felt the same feelings, made the same choices, but in different ways and for different reasons, following a path parallel to the rest of society until he found there were parts he couldn't surmount without allowing himself to be led astray. Yuri wondered how love had been twisted into obsession - how easy or difficult a thing like that was. More than anything, he wondered how Georgi could have been helped rather than handcuffed.  
  
"Pork cutlet!" A hand slapped him upside the back of his skull and he instinctively reached up to catch his hat before it escaped. He turned and shot a stern look at his competitively stern partner in justice. Yurio bristled and strode into the room to collect Georgi and lead him to his waiting cell. "Sarge wants to talk to you when you've got a moment."  
  
"What did Captain Feltsman say?" Yuri asked half-heartedly as he watched Georgi be ushered out of the room with his head hung so low that he appeared from behind to have been decapitated.  
  
"The usual," Yurio shrugged the way a burnt out celebrity might when asked about their favorite role. "Lots of yelling, lots of admonishing, lots of PLISETSKY!"  
  
Yuri couldn't hide his amusement when his partner turned and gave a dead-on impression of their irritable superior. Phichit seemed lured in by his chuckling, for when Yuri looked back he saw the young Thai officer leaning in with curiosity.  
  
"I almost wish he'd still been wearing the make-up!"  
  
"Huh?" Yuri reacted, surprised that Phichit could have snuck up on him so effortlessly. Usually he would have noticed someone getting the drop on him even in a casual conversation, but his police instincts must have been on cooldown since the ordeal at the apartment building. "Wouldn't that be totally against protocol?"  
  
"Sure but it would make for a great meme," Phichit offered proudly. "The text would say - maybe he's born with it, maybe it's kidnapping in the first degree!"  
  
"You have a pretty weird sense of humor, Phichit."  
  
"Have you seen the internet recently?" Phichit shrugged amiably. "The way the media sensationalizes these criminals, they may as well be celebrities on some of these forums. I could easily be taking glamor shots!"  
  
Yuri smiled wryly. Phichit was nothing if not enthusiastic, though a lot of that probably stemmed from the fact that he rarely left the office. He didn't have to go out there and see crime in its natural habitat. All he saw were the constant parading in and out of apprehended suspects. It was difficult for Phichit to see them as people due to the media blitz and hullabaloo, whereas for Yuri it was sometimes difficult to see them as anything but. Whether that made his job easier or harder was anyone's guess.  
  
He allowed Phichit to take a celebratory selfie with him and tag it with #arrest, #witchnapping, etc - and then it was time to find Sergeant Nikiforov. He located Victor in the break room, and hesitated for a moment before catching his superior's azure eye, knowing that Victor took his downtime almost as seriously as his police work. But it was too late - Victor had already identified him from across the room and beckoned him, his police cap balanced on his wagging finger as he effortlessly pulled out a chair for Yuri with his foot.  
  
"Yuri!" Victor cooed proudly, sliding a fresh coffee in his direction. Yuri blushed as Victor had always remembered how he took his coffee since the first time they'd spoken off duty years ago. He had often wondered how Victor liked his coffee, as since that day he'd always seen the sergeant cradling a flask of the hot stuff when he wasn't hard at work, but Victor had been surprisingly coy about the subject. And Victor wasn't the type to be coy about most subjects. "Good job out there today. Upholding the law and all that. Another notch on your bedpost of justice."  
  
"Ah," Yuri's cheeks lit up as he accepted the beverage and sipped at it delicately. It was piping hot, almost as though Victor had timed it for precisely the moment he walked into the break room. "I don't know how comfortable I am with that image."  
  
"In my experience there's nothing comfortable about bedposts," alluded Victor, a smile dancing across his handsome features for a moment before he took a stifled swig from his flask. His smile disappeared momentarily before continuing. "Speaking of awkward positions, I'm sorry you had to be one of the first people in that room to find that poor girl."  
  
"I'm not," Yuri responded immediately.  
  
"I meant, of course, that I'm sorry you had to see such awful things," Victor expanded, a friendlier, less teasing tone permeating his words. "No matter how many crime scenes I've walked in on, it's never any easier. It just gets more familiar."  
  
"I needed to see it," Yuri responded quietly, his temperament almost enough to cool his drink a good ten degrees. Despite their difference in rank, and regardless of their years of experience, talking to Victor always seemed to feel like he was on equal footing. As though he were talking to an attractive reflection of himself. Yuri bit his lip at the idea of seeing Victor's image welcoming him in the mirror one unexpected morning. "I've been thinking about it a lot since I walked into that room, and while it was unsettling, I think I needed to see it."  
  
"To remind you that this person you apprehended was a monster?" Victor asked. "You've always been reluctant to see some of these criminals for what they are, their dark motivations and their potential for cruelty and harm. But this guy was without a doubt one of the worst. It's good that he's behind bars."  
  
"I've come to understand all of that," said Yuri. "I'm not so naive anymore. Haven't been for a long time."  
  
"I suppose that's me looking at you the way you used to be then," Victor beamed. He reached forward and adjusted Yuri's collar. "But I suppose you can't blame me. You were very cute when you first joined the force."  
  
Yuri flinched more at Victor's words than his attempts to fix his uniform. "Seeing what he did. Georgi. He made all those choices from a very selfish idea of what was right. I suppose all criminals do." He set his coffee down on the table and waited for the room to thin out a little bit before he cleared his throat and spoke more confidentially. "I suppose until I walked into that room, I didn't realize that making what seem to be all the right decisions can lead to a very ugly place. What seems like justice to one person can be criminal to another. What seems like love can be pain and loneliness for the person those feelings are focused on."  
  
Victor began gently screwing the cap back onto his flask. He shuffled forward in his chair and spoke softly, sincerely. "You remember what I told you, about the heart being rather like a gun? That it would sometimes do more damage not to pull the trigger than to fire indiscriminately?" Yuri was surprised that this was as memorable an exchange for Victor as it had been for himself. "Well, Georgi's heart was more like an explosive. A grenade whose pin was pulled out with unfortunate haste. His connections to other people were already frayed, he had started himself down a path that required him to see people as liabilities or witnesses to his self destruction as a human being. That's the key difference, you know."  
  
"Between what?"  
  
"Between you and the criminals," Victor went on, his words firm as though he were repeating a mantra to himself. It was the voice Yuri expected Victor might use when reading entries of his own diary aloud to remind himself of somewhere he'd already been. "They don't have the same connection to other people as we do. People aren't love or life or family to them. They are accessories, something that could potentially lead to them being undone or uncovered. You and I see those around us as a reminder that life is worth living, whereas they see them as a reminder that all of this could end at any moment. To them, people are just dots that could connect all the way back to them, and if the wrong person follows those dots... It's like a trap that they've already willingly climbed into without knowing it. And as soon as they see it, it's too late to get out."  
  
Yuri sat in Victor's company, all too happy to be caught in that trap. "Do you think he really loved her?"  
  
"He testified as much," Victor shrugged almost indifferently. "But love is only real when the two see it for what it is. Not when the other is blind to it."  
  
Yuri and Victor's conversation continued long into their break, which was all too short for them both. 


End file.
